Serious and Silly meet Naughty and Nice
and learn to play Kick the Can

1. In the Dentist Office - wherein I discover the Inner Playground: (mp3)
2. The Inner Playground - defined
3. My Inner Inner City
4. My Own Private Hollywood
5. Part Two: Games for the Inner Player
6. Freeze Tag
7. Mother May I
8. Simon Says
9. Part Three: Building an Inner Playground
10. The Inner Seesaw
11. My Inner Swingset
12. Part Four: Introducing Serious and Silly
13. Serious and Silly (mp3)
14. Kick the Can

One day, Serious and Silly were playing Hide and Seek. Actually, it was the 17,534th day Serious and Silly had been playing Hide and Seek. But who's counting? Which, of course, is a whole other question.

So there they were, as usual, Serious once again trying to get the rules clear. Silly once again being, well, silly.

Only this time, Silly clearly stepped out of bounds with this silliness thing, and did something that could only be called naughty.

"That's naughty," exclaimed Serious. And so it was.

Naughty, it turns out, was with Nice at the time. Who immediately introduced everybody to everybody else and proceeded to organize a game of Kick the Can.

And Kick the Can, as only someone as nice as Nice would know, is a game that would attract Serious, Silly and especially Naughty, with whom Nice was. Because it's like Hide and Seek, the very game Silly and Serious had spent a lifetime playing.

And it's just different enough to be a New Game.
 
In Kick the Can, the Can is Home Base. A different kind of Home Base, though. A kickable one. A moveable, pick-up-and-throw-away-able kind of Home Base.

And just like in Hide and Seek, you hide and try to get back to the base without being seen. And if IT sees you and tags you before you can get to the Can, you become a Prisoner and you have to stay at the Can and do pretty much nothing. But if someone else can sneak in without getting tagged by IT and kick the Can, everyone is free and gets to hide again and IT has to be IT another round.

Oddly enough, everyone thought this would be fun.

So, guess who winds up being IT?

Serious? I don't think so. By the time Serious got ALL the rules down, everybody else would have found something else to play.

Silly? IT? You can't expect Silly to play by one set of rules long enough for anybody to figure out the game.

So Nice it is. That is, Nice is IT. As for Naughty, nobody, not even Naughty, wanted a Naughty IT. Not for the first round, at least.

And guess also what becomes the Can?

Something in your personal landscape as actual as a Can, as common, as kickable. Tangible like a Can, but evanescent, like a Can being kicked. Like hearing the sound of the surf? Feeling the sand between your toes? Seeing the outline of a cloud?

Remember, it has to be something everyone agrees to, but Nice gets to decide.

Guess where everybody goes to hide.

Guess who gets his Can kicked by whom.

Guess what happens when Nice gets Serious.

Guess how long Nice has to be IT.